


Stars

by DailyDaves



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: M/M, request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-09 00:30:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1962102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DailyDaves/pseuds/DailyDaves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t remember when it started.</p><p>It was probably sometime back in England, when he helped Gavin pack, between writing ‘fragile’ on boxes over and over again with a dying sharpie and shoving a bunch of his best friend’s shit into said boxes. He and Gavin took a break at some point in the long hours of the night and that break somehow ended up consisting of several hours, at which point Dan found himself sat with Gavin on his bed watching videos of his soon-to-be-coworkers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Cross posted at my tumblr [Here](http://burnvins.co.vu/post/88444314172/remember-how-we-were-talking-about-danchael-because)!

He doesn’t remember when it started.

It was probably sometime back in England, when he helped Gavin pack, between writing ‘fragile’ on boxes over and over again with a dying sharpie and shoving a bunch of his best friend’s shit into said boxes. He and Gavin took a break at some point in the long hours of the night and that break somehow ended up consisting of several hours, at which point Dan found himself sat with Gavin on his bed watching videos of his soon-to-be-coworkers.

He remembers feeling proud of Gavin, feeling in a daze of happiness and pride and relief that Gavin’s finally  _happy_  and he also remembers just half paying attention to what Gavin was showing him, up until he pulls up a video of a certain Michael Jones.

(and let it be known that Daniel Gruchy is a quiet man. Let it be known that he likes quiet people. Let it be known that yelling startles him. And let it be known that Michael Jones is the exception, always has been, is now, and always will be.)

 _That’s_  when it starts, he thinks. And at the same time, he doesn’t. Because it wasn’t any sort of ‘love-at-first-sight’ deal. It wasn’t like he fell in love with Michael right then and there as he sat with Gavin on his bed surrounded by moving boxes and listening to the sound of a very angry man screaming at the top of his lungs into the silence of the rest of the room. He doesn’t know exactly when it started, but he remembers paying attention and laughing at him with Gavin.

Maybe it started the first time Dan actually met Michael.

Maybe. Before then, Dan kept up with Gavin’s life even after he moved to the States. Gavin is, after all, his best friend (always has been, always will be) and they talked on the phone every night. Gavin’s mentions of Michael’s became more and more frequent and after only two weeks of Gavin living in the States, he asked Dan to visit, assuring him he’d pay for his plane ticket.

Dan didn’t let him, of course. He remembers the day he arrived in Austin for the first time and saw Gavin, all signs of past depression gone, the dark lines of insomnia erased from his face, and suddenly Gavin looked younger and more alive and Dan knew in that moment that he wouldn’t have to worry anymore, that he’d never have to worry again.

He recalls hugging Gavin, picking him up easily and spinning him around and above all, he remembers the grin he got from Gavin’s friend and the joking comment of how they looked like lovers. He’d laughed and Gavin had introduced them and Dan had found himself looking into the freckled face of Michael Jones and trying to guess how many constellations of starry dots there were on his face and how many more were hidden under the rims of his glasses.

Maybe that’s when it starts, but even then, it wasn’t love at first sight. Dan doesn’t actually believe in love at first sight. It sounds like a lot of bollocks to him. But there is such a thing as lust at first sight, and he thinks maybe he’s experienced that.

Michael glowed. Gavin glowed, too, under the Austin sun as he seemed to convert energy to happiness, but Michael glowed differently. While Gavin emitted happiness, Michael seemed to emit light itself, and there were times when Dan would look over and catch him smiling just slightly, brown eyes focused on whatever it was that was making him smile, and Dan would suddenly feel like he was intruding on something private. He lit up the whole room with that smile and with the constellations of a thousand million stars on his face and in his bright eyes and for the first time in a long time, Dan had felt  _flustered_.

Gavin gave the bed in his loft up to Dan that night and Dan didn’t let him, of course, because Gavin is always far too generous to him without even a second thought, and took the couch instead and in those last moments before he fell asleep, thought about galaxies in brown eyes and curly russet hair and smiles that could light up ten million universes and wondered if he’d always been this fascinated with astronomy.

Gavin and Michael were close. They fit together like pieces in a puzzle, one complementary to the other and they immediately clicked when Gavin moved to the States. Somehow, someway, Dan fit into their puzzle, too, and it wasn’t awkward or a misfit.

The night before Dan left to go back home Gavin asked if Dan was jealous that he and Michael were such good friends, asking him in a shaking voice just minutes after Dan turned the lights off and almost fell asleep. The question had jolted him awake and shocked him, because he’d never considered that, never felt that way, never seen Michael as some sort of antagonist and doubted he ever could.

Michael told him to call once he was off the plane. Dan did, and later tried to grasp how freckled, starry, reserved Michael could be the same Michael who got famous for his anger and screaming and why either of them seemed relieved he’d made it back home safely and why he’d stayed talking to Dan for hours.

He’s simple. He knows that. Dan’s a simple person. He doesn’t really get bothered by much. He’s not easily upset or angered. And he doesn’t fall in love easily, either. He’s simple, but he doesn’t see the world in a simple manner because things are complex and shades of grey and never black and white and Michael is so far off the spectrum for Dan that he doesn’t even try to put him on it and it’s  _that_  that partially makes Dan like him.

Michael’s his complement, too.

He doesn’t really remember exactly  _when_  he fell in love with Michael, but he does remember the first time he slept with him.

It was nothing special, really, though at the same time, it was. Before it, they’d never kissed or said a word of romantic affection towards each other. It’d just—happened. Somehow, someway, it’d happened. It was the week before Dan was set out for deployment and had gone for a weekend visit to Austin. Gavin was torn up about it and obviously so, though he would never actually  _say_ anything because he was an idiot who kept everything locked up with the key hidden away, instead drinking until Dan had to nearly carry him home. Because of it, Gavin was coming back to England with him to see him off, and it happened the night before their flight.

Dan had been sitting on the steps to Gavin’s studio with Michael, alone in the night with him, neither of them too drunk to not understand but both of them buzzed enough that it wouldn’t matter. They hadn’t said much, holding a quiet, easy conversation as they avoided the thing hanging between them that neither of them had wanted to acknowledge.

Michael had broken the conversation suddenly, fixed Dan with a look as if all the other words had left him, their conversation forgotten about in an instant, and said, “You might not come back.”

It’d been the thing no one had told him, no one had outright said, everyone dancing around it and never just coming out and saying it like it was some huge secret. It had felt like a relief to hear someone actually say it and not try to make it sound pretty or better than it really was.

So Dan had just nodded, not trying to make it any better for Michael, not trying to comfort him or tell him it’d be alright because he wasn’t going to make a promise he couldn’t keep to him.

He remembers the scent of alcohol on Michael’s lips as he leaned into him and how he’d tried to count the freckles on Michael’s face when they first met and how he’d counted Michael’s teeth with his tongue when they kissed that first time and the way they’d stayed like that on the stairs to Gavin’s studio until Michael had pulled away, stood, and offered his hand to Dan with a simple explanation of , “We need to go back to my place. I’m loud and I don’t want Gavin to wake up.”

He’d taken Michael’s offer, taken his hand and went home with him, and it was then, right there in Michael’s car that he’d realized that he’d somehow fallen in love with the loud American boy with stars on his face and lights in his eyes.

There’d been no questions. He’d gone with Michael to his apartment and he’d mapped out Michael’s body with his hands and mouth, trying to commit everything to memory even through the franticness and the alcohol dulling away his thoughts. Michael’s clothes had ended up nearly torn, Dan almost too far gone to undress, and Michael’s voice echoing through the otherwise silent apartment as his headboard slammed against the wall in a rhythm Dan still hasn’t forgotten.

More than anything he remembers wrapping himself around Michael as he quietly drifted off, pulling Dan’s arms around him and tucking his head of hundreds of curls under his chin as Dan listened to his breathing evening out into soft sighs and counted the stars he could see out Michael’s balcony window.

Leaving had been tough. Gavin hadn’t questioned Dan returning from Michael’s apartment with Michael in tow. He hadn’t said anything, instead becoming a soft spoken, sullen creature Dan had never seen before. Michael had seen them off and Dan had pulled him close at the airport and Michael had refused to let go. He didn’t tell Gavin and the closer the date got, the more unfamiliar Gavin became, inseparable from Dan the entire week in England until he finally broke down and begged him to stay the night before he was supposed to go out for deployment.

And like every other time, Dan had to tell him no but somehow, someway, it was harder that time because that time wasn’t pushing Gavin to follow his dreams or forcing him to persist in something he considered hopeless. It was telling Gavin that he had to do this, telling him that he might lose his best friend, and telling him he had to accept it and there was nothing he could do about it. He thought about Michael, too, and the way he’d said Dan could possibly die and the way that hug at the airport had lasted a long time and simultaneously, not long enough.

But Dan went anyways and Gavin couldn’t look at him when he saw him off, not even when he held onto Dan and wrapped his arms around him, and Michael wouldn’t answer his phone or his texts when he landed and he can’t remember ever feeling as alone as he had in the moment he walked on that plane.

Michael eventually did answer, though. Gavin eventually became himself again, too. And things were alright.

Things are still alright now. Now, after two years and now, after Dan’s moved to Austin after his final deployment, after Gavin’s found himself a girl and Dan has found himself a starry faced angry boy. He doesn’t worry anymore, not about Gavin, not about Michael, not about deployment, and he’s realized he’s finally found happiness, too.

Happiness, he thinks, is probably the warmth of the Austin sun and the light Michael Jones seems to emit and the warmth from him as Dan lays his head on his stomach and dozes off as Michael mutters a short sentiment of love and brushes his hand through Dan’s hair.

It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know when it starts and doesn’t remember exactly when he falls in love. He’s here now, counting constellations and stars and warmed with the light Michael glows with, and Dan’s a simple person with a not-so-simple mind and that’s all that’s ever mattered and will matter.


End file.
